We’re Alone : Edwidge Danticat

“Reading Edwidge Danticat's We're Alone is like sitting down to listen to an old friend …With clear, concise prose that delves into harsh topics without losing its sense of humor, Danticat once again proves that she is one of contemporary literature's strongest, most graceful voices.” - NPR Book Reviews 

Edwidge Danticat talks with Brent Hayes Edwards about We’re Alone, her recent book of essays that trace a loose arc from her childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, and include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez, and James Baldwin. The essays explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and the complexities of resilience, moving from the personal to the global and back again.  Literature and art remain her reliable companions and guides through both tragedies and triumphs.  We’re Alone is a book that asks us to think through some of the world’s intractable problems while deepening our understanding of one of the most significant novelists at work today.

We’re Alone has garnered high critical praise and was a Finalist for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle for Nonfiction, and named by NPR.org, Publishers Weekly, and Electric Literature Best Book of 2024.

Edwidge Danticat is the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. 

She is the award-winning author of 18 books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; the novels-in-stories, The Dew Breaker, Claire of the Sea Light, and The Art of Death, a National Book Critics Circle finalist for Criticism. Her memoir, Brother, I'm Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. 

Edwidge Danticat is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow, a 2018 Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow, a 2018 winner of the Neustadt Prize, a 2020 United States Artist Fellow, a 2020 winner of the Vilceck Prize, and a 2023 winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story.

Brent Hayes Edwards is the Peng Family Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Associate Director of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. He is the editor of the journal PMLA. His books include The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Harvard UP, 2003) and the English translation of Michel Leiris’s monumental 1934 Phantom Africa (Seagull, 2017). His most recent publications are the co-edited volume Écrire le monde noir (Rot-Bo-Krik, 2024), a collection of the interwar writings of the pioneering Martinican intellectual Paulette Nardal, and Easily Slip into Another World (Knopf, 2023), the co-written autobiography of the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Henry Threadgill, which won the ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Book Award in Pop Music, the Jazz Journalists Association Book of the Year Award, and the American Book Award. Edwards was a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, and in 2020 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

This event is free and open to the public, but please note that registration does not guarantee a seat. We intentionally overbook our events, and seating is first come, first served. We recommend arriving early.

Important:

Columbia’s campus is currently open only to Columbia-affiliated guests (with a valid CUID).
If you do not have a Columbia ID, you will need a QR code to enter campus.

To receive a QR code:

• You must register on Eventbrite at least 48 hours in advance
• We will submit your name and email to Public Safety
• You will receive an email from with your unique QR code on the day of the event.

Please check your spam/junk folder if you don’t see the email, and bring a valid photo ID with you to present at campus entry points.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher CU Maison Française